IN AMERICA, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have been entertaining audiences since their television debuts at the age of nine months on the television series Full House.

The 18-year-old twins have steadily expanded their empire, including fashion and lifestyle products, children's books, video games and films.

This year alone, the Olsen brand is expected to gross in excess of a billion dollars.

In the coming-of-age comedy New York Minute, the girls make the difficult transition from direct-to-video features to the big screen.

Seventeen-year-old twin sisters Jane (Ashley) and Roxy Ryan (Mary-Kate) are like chalk and cheese: the former is a hard-working overachiever who has every facet of her life mapped out in meticulous detail; the latter is a rebellious bad girl who would rather play drums with her rock band than study.

Since the death of their mother, the girls have struggled to get along.

Jane has adopted the role of surrogate mother, ensuring that her father (Pinsky) enjoys a hearty breakfast and gets to work on time.

Roxy merely scowls at her goody-two-shoes sibling.

When Jane ventures to New York to deliver a speech which could land her a lucrative scholarship to Oxford University, Roxy tags along with the intention of sneaking backstage at a video shoot for the rock band Simple Plan.

However, the sisters are unaware that they are being watched.

Deranged truancy officer Max Lomax (Levy) monitors Roxy's movements at every turn, determined to catch his pint-sized arch-nemesis.

This leads to a madcap chase through Manhattan, which brings the girls into contact with a menacing limousine driver (Richter), a sassy beautician (Davis) and two hunky guys (Padalecki, Smith).

New York Minute is perfectly serviceable fare for the target audience: young teenage girls.

Ashley and Mary-Kate have an undeniable screen presence and they ricochet nicely from comedy to drama and back again.

They are an appealing double-act and all those years in front of the television cameras have honed their timing to perfection.

The sickly sentimentality of the finale, when the two sisters realise how much they mean to each other, is hard to swallow and stretches plausibility far beyond breaking point.

The comedic genius of Levy is somewhat wasted in the two-dimensional supporting role.